The skies over California's Sierra Nevada mountains are set to be a young man's dream over the next month. Among the attractions: a scientifically unrivaled aircraft, whirling breakneck winds, and a T-REX.
The aircraft is the HIAPER, a Gulfstream V outfitted with advanced weather-measuring tools. The winds are rotors, highly dangerous turbulent gusts that form over the mountains beneath cresting waves of air. The T-REX is not a dinosaur, but the Terrain-Induced Rotor Experiment, a research project being conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The $81.5 million HIAPER is uniquely qualified to conduct the study because of its ability to reach 51,000 ft. and thus fly above the rotors. While up there, researchers will study the rotors from above, and their effects on the atmosphere. More researchers on the ground will study them with radars, lidars and weather stations. The goal is to increase forecasters' abilities to predict rotors, their location and intensity, along with studying the gravity waves that crest above them. T-REX is the first exploration of rotors of its kind and will be advised by scientist Joachim Kuettner, who first explored the waves as a young man himself in the 1930s.—Adam Raymond